Home ministry persisting with outdated thinking

The political class may be making the right noises in the wake of the horrific gangrape incident but its half-sincerity on the issue of sexual crimes against women is clear from the nature of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2012.

This Bill, introduced in Parliament during the Winter session, fails to list stalking and stripping and parading naked of women as sex crimes.

Significantly, as many as 200 women's organisations and activists had submitted a critique of the proposed legislation to the Union government but their representations fell on deaf ears.

This has happened despite the National Commission for Women and the Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry proposing that stalking be made a specific offence under the Indian Penal Code - this was reiterated by WCD Minister Krishna Tirath at the conference of chief secretaries and DGPs on crimes against women under way in the capital on Friday.

Somewhat bizarre is the explanation trotted out by the Union Home Ministry to justify the exclusion. In the age of technology when clinching proof can be obtained on stalking, the home ministry thinks it would be difficult to prove the offence in a court of law.

That the relevant departments of the same government are opposing this line is not in the least surprising. While stalking itself is a grave problem and can psychologically shake a victim, this country has seen several cases where stalking was followed by a more serious crimes like rape, murder or both.

As for stripping and parading naked of women, they occur on a regular basis in India's hinterland. Unfortunately the home ministry seems to persist with an antiquated mindset that is unwilling to treat certain kinds of violation of women as specific crimes that need to be dealt with strictly.

Intolerable words

Akbaruddin Owaisi, the younger son of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) leader Salahuddin Owaisi is no stranger to controversy.

A member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative assembly, in 2007, he had threatened to carry out the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie and behead Taslima Nasreen, were they to ever visit Hyderabad, his home city.

But now he has gone several steps further. In a speech in December he disparaged the entire Hindu population of the country and mocked their beliefs and disparaged their gods.

The MIM is linked to the communal politics through which the Nizam tried to establish a Muslim dominion in the wake of the British departure from India.

The militant Razakar organisation that fought integration with India was directly linked to the MIM. In the 1970s Salahuddin Owaisi built up the outfit into a formidable political organisation. Currently Akbaruddin Owaisi's brother Asaduddin Owaisi is the president of the MIM.

The latest developments are linked to the MIM's November 2012 decision to withdraw support to the United Progressive Alliance because it feels that the Congress has mishandled the communal situation in Hyderabad.

Whatever be the case, the Indian state cannot brook the kind of nonsense that Mr Owaisi has been spouting and the authorities must seek his extradition from UK and proceed against him for his hate speech.

The Supreme Court gave the government flak over NGOs

Government deserved the flak

Already under fire from civil society and the industry, the government was reminded on Thursday that its original antagonist - an activist judiciary - hasn't disappeared either.

The Supreme Court hauled up the government for failing to take any action on illegal clinical trials that NGOs claim have become widespread.

Although the apex court did not ban the trials altogether, it said they would be permitted only after a government pledge that proper procedure would be followed and that the union health secretary would oversee the process.

Importantly, the bench, presided by Justice RM Lodha, pointed out that the government had completely ignored a parliamentary panel's recommendation for a thorough review of the trial system, which had been using poor, illiterate citizens and even children as guinea pigs. "You are in deep slumber.

You are not doing anything," Justice Lodha told the additional solicitor general. The government would do well to emulate the Supreme Court's concern for the rights of Indian citizens.

Clinical trials may serve the cause of medicine but exploitation of the underprivileged cannot be allowed under any circumstance.